presidente

The kids, Lonnie and I were lucky enough to have dinner with my mission president and his wife last week. It was great to be able to catch up and reminisce about our time in the Dominican Republic. I am so grateful for their influence in my life. I loved being a missionary.

mi tocalla

I have a really cool friend named Alisa.

Not only do we share the same name but we both served missions in the Dominican Republic (I was even lucky enough to be her teacher in the MTC Welfare program). Both of our parents moved to Danville, CA while we were in our college years. We also both have two children, a boy and a girl. Oddly enough we are both Democrats who support Obama, while our religious culture is primarily Republican.

While we were together this past weekend we also realized that for similar reasons we both refused to have diamond wedding or engagmement rings. Somehow we also ended up both living in Texas for a few overlapping months.

Having so many things in common with someone like her makes me feel validated.

Thanks for being my friend Alisa.


Max and Maya loved the attention they got from David and Mary. The also loved their dog and cat. Every time Maya would see the dog she would start barking like she was trying to carry on a conversation with him.

top ten reasons you should visit new zealand

And in case you needed another reason....



or another.....

things I will miss about texas

1. Our wonderful friends
2. Having a house big enough for lots of house guests
3. Bluebell Ice cream
4. Availability and quality of tortillas.
5. Having everyone at the grocery store recognize the babies
6. Alligators at Brazos Bend
7. Warm weather (but not the excessive heat and humidity)
8. Awesome thunder storms
9. Crape Myrtle flowers
10. Magnolia trees

update

Things are going smoothly with selling our house. We worked hard to get everything perfectly ready and on Oct 11 we had five showings lined up for the first day. We received an offer that night. After some short negotiations we came to an agreement and everything was set. We are closing on December 4th.

We will spend December in Utah visiting family and friends and then fly down to New Zealand in early January. We have been busy working on our visa applications which have required extensive medical paperwork, fingerprinting and FBI clearance. Hopefully everything will be pulled together in time. The process has been more complicated than we expected.

Halloween

The babies have been sick this week. We missed the library party but decided that they babies were well enough to stop by the ward trunk-or-treat and then a couple of neighbor's houses. They looked so cute in their costumes that I had to show them off.
The kids were pretty overwhelmed at the ward party. They just kept staring at everyone. Max wanted to be held the whole time and Maya just kept staring at people.
We went trick-or-treating to a couple neighbor's houses. The kids got the hang of it pretty quickly, although they didn't want to stop at the door, the made it all the way into 3 of the 4 houses that we went to visit.

you got caught

I left the room for just a few mins and came back to this mess. They just too cute for me to get mad at, so I just took photos instead. Thankfully it all came up from the carpet. The funniest part is that the kids have been sick this week and haven't really wanted to eat much, I guess I just wasn't offering them the right thing.

ducks

While these pictures may look sweet and serene I must admit that usually when I leave the house I am constantly worried that one of the kids is going to run out into the street, fall in a lake or just fall down and start screaming. Most of the time I end of carrying both kids, which is now almost 50lbs. I have been working really hard on getting the babies to hold hands when we out out places. Hopefully in they will get better at it soon.

books

The kids LOVE to read books. Books are their favorite toys. They don't just flip through the pages, the look at each page and point to the things that they recognize. They often come and sit down on our laps with a book in their hands saying "book, book, book" and nodding their heads.

Regardless of what the book is about they are ecstatic if they can find a dog or a cat. They aren't talking much yet but the use a lot of signs that they learned from Baby Signing Time. They make all the signs they know when ever they recognize something in a book.


Here the babies are reading "Where the Wild Things Are". They love the book, but I'm pretty sure they aren't ready for the movie.

at this age...

At this age we like to climb up on top to chairs, tables and book cases....

we like to get stuck in strange places....

and we don't like to be locked up.